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IN THE EYE OF A STORM
When disaster strikes, the job of Amy McLachlan from the Australian Red
Cross is to gather and marshal emergency personnel. She’s not a volunteer –
rather a professional aid worker where the need for resilience is a priority.
May 2017 HRM magazine 33
“Our goal is to source as locally as
possible, bearing in mind that people are
dealing with a disaster in their own lives.”
AMY MCLACHLAN, INTERNATIONAL AID WORKER, RED CROSS
VOLUNTEERING
English teachers and now we send specialised
professionals such as radiologists and water
engineers.”
Interestingly, Bird says some of the nations
with which Australians have been sharing their
skills are now outdoing Australia in certain areas.
“A good example is a women’s rights
organisation in Indonesia that has female
commissioners who look at law changes, at
the nation’s general culture and at how women
are portrayed in society. They are far more
proactive than in Australia,” he says.
AVI is cu rrently meeting with large
organisations, hoping to convince them to invest
in their people by sending them away for stints
as a volunteer. The evidence of the value for the
organisations comes back to HR issues such as
staff retention and skills development.
“We have recently developed an assessment
tool that demonstrates the development of
personal and professional competencies while
volunteering,” Bird says. “ We’re hoping for
corporates to support and co-fund these
placements for evidence-based leadership
and career development, as well as staff
retention. One of our challenges is that the term
‘volunteer’ is, as the UN says, ‘undervalued
and misconstrued’. People need to realise
that volunteering is an experience that is
professionally and personally fulfilling.”•••
Amy McLachlan’s first offshore placement
as an international aid worker for Red Cross
was to Liberia in 2014, to help out with the
Ebola operation. Her role was to support the
Liberian Red Cross and the International
Federation of the Red Cross operations team
in their urgent expansion efforts as the scope
of the epidemic became apparent.
“Our goal is to source as locally as
possible, bearing in mind that
local people are dealing with
a disaster in their own lives.
Being able to provide jobs to
the local population is a good
way of injecting cash back
into the economy and getting
people back on their feet.”
When an earthquake
struck Nepal in April 2015,
McLachlan had 12 hours
to accept a deployment. “I
was there to manage the
rotation of the huge a mount
of international staff who were coming in,”
she says. “I also supported the Nepal Red
Cross Society in their rapid expansion. That
became very interesting because there were
things like the monsoons to think about,
and then the onset of winter. With the
widespread da mage to shelters, it was really
important we thought well into the future.
“Damage was widespread throughout
Nepal. We had to quickly add ress immediate
needs around shelter, water and sanitation,
clinical and public health and psycho-social
support. With the repeated earthquakes and
aftershocks, a lot of people were severely
traumatised, including the local staff and
volunteers, the international team and the
visiting experts.”
The Liberia deployment lasted five weeks
and Nepal four weeks. Her third and most
recent deployment was to Fiji a few months
after cyclone Winston. This time her role was
to support the local Red Cross society in their
organisational development so that there was
greater preparedness for future disasters.
“Often, better organisational preparation
comes down to mundane things like the
governance framework, the structure of the
organisation itself, how teams and reporting
lines could change and how business
communications can be optimised in a
response to an emergency,” McLachlan says.
“My work is a lot broader than just
focussing on the people side of things. We’re
thinking about how we can prepare Red Cross
national societies and local public services to
better respond in an emergency.”
“It is important to us that we’re always
ref lecting upon and improving our ways of
working. Looking at how we mobilise people
nationally and internationally and developing
organisationally is crucial in order to remain
effective and accountable in providing
humanitarian aid.”
Pulling together:
clockwise from left, a
community member
collects sap from the
buds of sugar palm in
Jogjakarta province,
Indonesia; Devastation
caused by the 2015
earthquake in Nepal;
Australian volunteer
Charles Persson with
Dennis Meone, CEO of
the Solomon Islands
Chamber of Commerce
and Industry (SICCI) and
the organisation’s team.
CREDIT:HARJONODJOYOBISONO
HRM32_30-31-VOLUNTEERING_V4.indd 33
20/04/2017 5:26 PM